Can’t Bake It? Fake It.
This week I thought I would test for the first time a packet scone mix, namely Tesco’s imaginatively named Scone Mix.
All you have to do is add milk to the ready-prepared mix. It was a really nice dough to work with – very light and fluffy. I had to add a little extra flour but apart from that it was pretty much spot on.
I could try and blame the fact that I burnt the scones on the recommended baking time of 10 minutes, but in their defence, all ovens are different and I should have checked after about 7 minutes (and would have if I hadn’t been too engrossed makingdukka from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s wonderful River Cottage: Veg Every Day recipe book.
Despite being a little bit too golden brown, the scones were still pretty tasty, and were very much enjoyed by my colleagues, along with the glittery homemade jam the Official Taster had been given.
I don’t think it was significantly quicker to use the scone mix than making them from scratch – it shaved off perhaps 10 minutes of measuring time. Where the mix really can’t be beaten, though (pardon the pun), is in price. The 320g of scone mix, which was supposed to make 6 scones but actually made far more, was 64p (plus the cost of milk) as opposed to buying butter, flour, milk, sugar and possibly eggs separately.
In summary, if you don’t crave the sense of pride you get from baking from scratch, this mix is a perfectly reasonable option, and I look forward to testing out more scone mixes in the future.
